Dream Father’s day

Does it get any better?

(1) Father’s day and I have started a grand tradition for the day. Buy something I want, wrap it, give it to Fynn and Harper who turn around and give it back to me. I am blown away that they knew exactly what I wanted (they’re only 4 & 2) and life is good and free of unwanted pressies…

(2) Aaron Baddeley is leading the US Open on the final day with some chump named Woods. If he wins that will be Aussies winning the US Open two years running and justification for renaming it the “Australian Open in America”. All I need to do now is engineer a 5 hour nap for the boys and I am home and hosed…

Death by Kinko’s

And while in New York we needed to do something pretty straight forward…make 40 copies of a document. How hard can that be? A google search shows more Kinko’s in any given square mile than Starbucks – that’s saying something…

I just read about the messy marriage of Fedex and Kinko’s and I was about to experience it first hand. Off we go to do said photocopying when we discover not one but every single black and white copier inoperable. They each needed ink, lens cleaning a group hug, I dunno. The staff tried their darndest but despite being literally surrounded by photocpiers, were unable to reproduce our document streak free. So off we trooped to another Kinko’s to find the same issue. Streaky copies…we eventually (at around 11pm) had the Kinko’s folks do the copies for us and we picked them up the next day.

The icing on the cake was that they had no way of binding the documents…just paperclips…no bull clips, nothing. They didn’t even sell them! So off to a paper supply store to get clips. Blood pressure at a million over one by this point!! And then we collate, collate, collate and just make it to our meeting!

Everybody breath….

NY, NY

Kim and I just blasted our way through New York. Three days, many meetings from gMums to strategic partners with the odd good meal thrown in. Nothing better than starting a day with a run around Central Park. It amazes me that at 5.30am there are huge Peletons doing laps and runners of all shapes and sizes putting the hard yards in. There was a quote near the Children’s Zoo – a city’s greatness is measured by the quality of their green spaces. NYC has done an amazing job.
And as you leave the tranquility of the park and negotiate around the horse drawn carriages you are transported right back into the thick of a major city the highlight being those delightful tax drivers. I had an idea for a reality tv show…take a NYC cabbie and a Portland cabbie and have them swap cities for a day. Make that an hour…

Conflict of interest

Our youngest, Harper is 2.5. Last week he decided he was over diapers. Hasn’t been in the product for 7 days now. And I though he was a team player…

A touch of celebrity

So at the aforementioned event, Kim and I had the opportunity to speak with Jenna Elfman and Amy Brenneman. Given the worship of celebrity in this big brown land and the media saturation of all things Hollywood it is always odd when you actually meet one or two of them up close and personal. They are both of course incredibly lovely and parents of course so we had much to talk about.

One big omission…

I failed to report on a terrific afternoon Kim and I had in Santa Monica, at an event to launch the new brand and name of CHEC – the non profit we support. Their new name is Healthy Child and they do great things to help keep homes safe for kids.
The event was held at the fabulous home of Steve Glenn. His home is the very first Platinum Leeds standard home in America. And his business – Living Homes – is in the business of making these homes for everybody. As he says, they are “nature made, factory built”. They are prefabricated offsite and then the team arrives onsite and puts it together – just like lego, kinda. His home took 8 hours to erect and you just have to watch the tour here. It is beautiful!

Solar Powered Treo

Charging my Treo in the glorious Portland sun. The folks at Reware make this great portable solar power plant. No emissions or messy used uranium to handle. You can strap it to your courier bag or just lay it out wherever to power up your PDA, phone, iPod…way cool!

A movie launch isn’t a movie launch…

…without an after party. gDiapers, Happy Baby and Baby Legs hosted an after party for the aforementioned movie. It was quite the success. We met customers by chance – who were really tall too – which is always a thrill. We ended up having sushi with these guys!
And as a couple who have had two homebirth waterbirths, we were surrounded by like minded people which is always nice. As homebirth now represents such a tiny percentage of all births, if you have had one you tend to be drawn to others who have done birth that way. And while I am by no means preaching – birth is a choice and you need to do it the way you want it – the movie did a great job of setting out where birth has come in 100 years, the medicalization of it and the risks of both hospital birth and homebirth. It was really well put together, again in non preachy way. There is always such a fine line to tread with these kinds of issues. There was a great interview with a really wise French ObGyn who did such a good job of setting out the issues.
Maybe time to have another one…

The Business of Being Born

Wow – what a great movie. It was just the right balance of data and expert opinion revealing the state of birth in the US, real experiences of Mums and Dads and their birthing stories, the view from a midwife and an Obgyn’s eye and humour. Yes humour – they had that fabulous clip from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life and the machine that goes ping.
I was really surprised you can make a movie that hammers home a point so well while being entertaining and not preachy. Just the facts.
The film is in the top 10 for audience popularity – if it wins the audience choice award, they get another
viewing tomorrow. And then it is off to a Cinemax near you.

Waiting, waiting, waiting

For a movie on birth, there was quite the audience for the matinee showing. And a surprising number of blokes…